Iman Usmani
Imagine that you are doing some tricky chemistry homework. You’re probably listening to music as you are doing it. Because you have been working on the same question for over an hour, you then decide to take a quick break and watch a short episode of “Friends” on Netflix. After that, you open your phone where you have one of those preprogrammed backgrounds as your screensaver.
Just then, you interacted with work from musicians, a whole creative crew and various actors/actresses and a team of graphic designers, and you probably didn’t even realize it. It’s interesting to see how we engage with content from creative people on a daily basis, but there is still that air of judgment when we meet someone who says their major is something related to liberal arts.
There is a stigma around people who are doing non-STEM majors at NC State, considering we are mainly known for our STEM programs. Many people experience that STEM majors have an elitist attitude, claiming their coursework is harder and that there is job security with the kind of program that they are in. This kind of attitude is almost sweeping the nation, as we see more emphasis on STEM in K-12 education and could also be a reason why there currently is an increase of students in the STEM majors. Between 2009 and 2013, the growth in degrees earned in science and engineering grew by 19 percent while other disciplines only saw 9 percent growth. People are starting to get this notion that being a STEM major will help you land a job in the future, because, at the end of the day, we are in college to get a job.
When they reveal their program, humanities majors get that dreaded question: will you get a job? People aren’t wrong for asking. Because of the shifting in the importance of STEM-related fields, some recruiters are less keen on humanities graduates. The research done by a contributor from Forbes, Dan Schawbel, shows that millennials would be better off with no degree, rather than spending thousands of dollars on a humanities bachelor. They deduced from a survey with 3000 job seekers that, “if you are going to be a humanities major, you have to have other courses to round yourself out.”
It’s this kind of attitude that trickles down into the mindset of everyday people who are skeptical when they hear someone pursuing a humanities education.
But it isn’t just liberal arts majors because, not to be a downer, we are all uncertain of our opportunities at the end of our college careers. Being a STEM major does not absolutely guarantee that you get a STEM-related job out of college. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, out of every two stem graduates, only one is employed. Likewise, the U.S. Census Bureau found that 74 percent of those with a bachelor’s in something STEM related were not employed be STEM occupations.
The lack of regard for liberal arts majors could very well have to do with these students’ location. Being situated at NC State, the 20th best STEM school in the country, makes the student body biased toward these kinds of majors. A friend of mine is studying film at the University of Southern California, which is a more well-rounded school in terms of the emphasis on their programs. Apparently, whenever she tells a STEM major about her major they say, “Oh, wow, that is so cool. I wish I could do theater,” and go on about how they are not creative enough to actually do what she does. This kind of appreciation for the arts is important considering the work that film, art, English, business, politics and other Bachelor of Arts do in our everyday life.
So, don’t knock those majors, because the people who study these subjects create content that we interact with on a daily basis. We are all in the same boat when it comes to the uncertainty of our future, regardless of what degree we are going to get. Also, don’t pass judgment on our humanities majors because you know you are going to watch, read or hear something that is created by those same people.